Everyday life at the Institute for advanced architecture of Catalonia
MAA Student Martin Firera Allessandri (Italy) is working on his project for the Material Systems Seminar final which will be next week. Led by Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poleto (EcoLogicStudio), the Material Systems seminar is investigating the relationship between material, materiality and material systems in the realm of architecture. To learn more about the Material Systems seminar you can read our earlier blog post previewing the Phase III seminar.
Seminar: Multidisciplinar Optimization
Faculty: Santiago Marin (Vortica)
In Phase III of the Masters in Advanced Architecture students will continue to work on their final projects in their Development Studios and they will also attend three seminars that cover a wide variety of topics.
The Multidisciplinar Optimization seminar will be divided into three different sessions. During the first session the students will approach the cognitive engineering for design methods with an introduction from CAD to CED. With the knowledge of management and project presentation of the second session, the students will be provided with tools to manage information within in a multidisciplinary project. One of the objectives will be to find as many parameters as possible that are affecting habitats in order to create a model in the 3rd session.
On Friday, the 13th of May, IAAC welcomed Farshid Moussavi who gave a lecture titled “Form and Ornament”.
Farshid Moussavi is an architect, educator and co-founder of Foreign Office Architects (FOA). She is Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University. She has published two books based on her work at Harvard, The Function of Forms and The Function of Ornament.
Farshid oriented her lecture around the relationship of Function of style with form and function as it is identified in her books. Throughout her lecture she stated that suggestive repetitions can over time suggest significant changes, as repetition is a fundamental condition in Architecture.
On Thursday, 12 May, IAAC welcomed Dr. Gunter Pauli for an open lecture in the IAAC Auditorium.
Dr. Gunter Pauli was born in Antwerp in 1956. He graduated with a degree in economics from Loyola’s University in Belgium and obtained his masters in business administration from INSEAD in France. He is the founder of the ZERI Foundations (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives).
Dr. Pauli presented The Blue Economy which encourages innovation in production, consumption and habitability in order to create a world in which sustainability is fast, low cost, and available to everyone.
IAAC and the Fab Lab BCN were recently featured in a story about the future of 3D printing on TV3 Televisió de Catalunya. Tomas Diez, Project Manager in the Fab Lab BCN, and Marta Malé-Alemany, Co-Director of IAAC’s MAA Program, explained the work that went into the current exhibition on display at DHUB Barcelona, Full Print3d.
This exhibition will be on view at DHUB BCN until 22 May.
(Above- IAAC Faculty Javier Peña working with MAA Student Manuel Alejandro Huerta Fernandez (Mexico) in DS2)
Last week students in the Masters for Advanced Architecture Program began work in their Development Studios. Phase III of the MAA Program is an Open Educational Structure where the students attend a Development Studio plus 1 seminar engaged with the studio (MAA Research Trips) and 2 seminars chosen within their academic interest. Phase III continues its focus in three different scales of investigation: territorial, architectural and parametric design.
This Development Studio is led by Vicente Guallart (IAAC Director) and Javier Peña assisted by Rodrigo Rubio. They are joined by guest expert, Nikos Salingaros.
Students: Miguel Guerrero (Spain), Natasa Pistofidou (Greece), Carolina Miro (Spain), Chryssa Karakana (Greece)
Research Studio: Digital Tectonics
Studio Instructor: Marta Malé-Alemany, MAA Co-Director
Student Summary:
“Earth´s abundance of sand and the critically self-organizing nature of granular materials were the inspiration of this research. To this day sand has predominantly been used in construction as a primer material as well as in sand casting moulds. The aim of the project is to numerically control the process of sand pile formation and solidification, through manual and digital design and experimentation.